you think this is a one-off? don’t be deluded. we are firmly in the zone of lawlessness & impunity. repression at home and aggression abroad. and a sleeping congress.

There isn't a single problem "solved" by edtech that couldn't be fixed with smaller classes led by well-paid teachers given real academic freedom

@jrabrams.bsky.social changed my law teaching for the better with this book. Highly recommend.

1/ A few thoughts about @williambaude.bsky.social’s comment in yesterday’s NYT chat that, “It’s amazing how many of our problems today could be solved by a Congress that was willing and able to legislate in response to national problems.” www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/o...

Look, I know this weaponization of male academic interest is the oldest story in the book, but it’s just so, so pernicious. It’s awful to the women directly involved, but it’s also awful to *all* women in the academy, who have to live in its shadow all the time.

The fact that many Democratic Senators are profoundly trapped in an unreal matrix of DC-media assumptions is a disaster on an epic scale. But it’s also an opportunity. You have to wait years to primary most Senators, but you can fight to change those assumptions now. Let me explain…

much of this stems from a gross misunderstanding of writing as “the act of sitting down to write”. writing is the 10,000 other things that you do before you sit down. it is light cast through a window hitting the far wall, it is the memory of that time you saw that one bird, it is the act of living

Here’s where it gets personal for me. When I was 9, I started experiencing suicidal ideation … disinterested in living, and at least some of the time contemplating death and how it might happen … It’s easy to imagine how I would have used programs like these chatbots.

I'd like to commend the lawyers who wrote this complaint on behalf of the professors and employees of the University of California against the Trump administration. It's a sober legal document with strong claims, but also, this is a fight for public opinion, and this reads like the writers know it.

The fate of the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship still hangs in the balance. Let’s get educated.

UC workers, alums, community members, please send Governor Newsom and your state legislators encouraging them to sue the federal government like Harvard did and release the feds' demand letter so Californians know what is at stake. It takes 2 minutes: actionnetwork.org/letters/uc-s...

I’m thrilled to be part of this webinar series on competence to stand trial, co-hosted by @nacdl.org and @statecourts.bsky.social. Our first session on Wednesday (11a PST) lays out the current state of play across the U.S. Join us! ncsc-org.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

My fearless colleague David Kaye, speaking truth to power.

Friendly reminder that things don’t go back to normal if he kicks the bucket. They could even get worse! And even when they lose an election there’s years, decades, generations of repair and remaking to be done.

also, responses matter—social opprobrium at institutions that caved helped push other institutions to stand up, and institutions that stood up made it more difficult for others to cave

So very proud to have my name on this excellent letter. Huge thanks to my UC colleagues who took the laboring oar in putting it together.

“We have committed our professional lives to learning and free inquiry, working together with students to advance truth for the collective benefit of society. Unlike our distant governing boards, we will not give up so easily — no matter what kind of deals are signed in our name.”

I'm so tired of hearing that we need to "teach our students how to use AI" when the thing they most need to use it is a critical-thinking skill set that can only be acquired by NOT using it. I'm tired of hearing that it's inevitable. I'm tired.

“You think I showed up with ChatGPT? . . .Dickinson? Obsessed. David Foster Wallace built a temple of footnotes in my name. I am not some sleek, futuristic glyph. I am the battered, coffee-stained backbone of writerly panic—the gasping pause where a thought should have ended but simply could not.”

Democracies collapse not just through force, but through the naïve self-confidence of elites. What should alarm us isn’t that strongmen follow similar playbooks, but that our elites do too. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/23/o...

A reminder that our profession is not just big firms, and that countless lawyers are stepping up in this critical moment. GIFT LINK www.nytimes.com/2025/07/21/u...

Video of me teaching legal research and writing in the fall.

Here’s the thing with universal injunctions. I’m agnostic on them, generally. I think there’s great scholarship on both sides (anti: Bagley & Bray) (pro: Mila Sohoni). But if there’s any reason for courts to have the power, it’s for attempts at unilateral constitutional amendment.

Finally got a terrible first draft done. Time to tear it apart.

“magical realist Zohran Mamdani” would be like if everyone on his team was human except for his ghost campaign manager and you could see a bodega cat levitating in one of his ads

I'm in the minority, and maybe a small one, but I think these administrative stays are genuinely harmful and should not be treated as routine. A federal court has ruled that a dramatic step of national significance was illegal and unconstitutional. It ruled. 1/

This. Exactly. Thanks, @biblioracle.bsky.social . open.substack.com/pub/academic...

It’s a writing day and every paragraph is followed by a little note like [ugh] or [fix this] or [YUCK]. Twenty-plus years into this whole writing thing and first drafts never get easier.

I made a friend on my morning walk.

Universities that prioritize “commercializable” fields over the humanities have long had it exactly backwards. Maybe one thing that comes out of all this is that we’ll finally realize this.

Our Criminal Courts and Court Actors panel at #LSACHICAGO2015 felt cursed. Two discussants and our moderator had to cancel. But then, we came together yesterday, and something just clicked. Such great research, all in conversation with each other, and an insightful discussion that followed.

if your grand approach to politics is bloodless poll-testing so that you're always aligned with wherever public opinion happens to be, you've already lost

Wrote this thing in which I look backwards to the 1850s to try to explain why the very worst stuff that's happening should make us outraged, but also that outrage and optimism are closer cousins than you might expect.

Multiple breakdowns in the process, incl: - Original author not checking the sources GenAI provided - Original author not telling coauthors that GenAI drafted outline - Coauthors not checking sources in outline - Authors failing to address broader GenAI hallucinations when judge flagged some issues

Free Mahmoud Khalil. Free Rümeysa Öztürk. Free all our students.

My tiny fox turns eight years old today! He loves baseball and charades and silly jokes, and he’s now too big for me to carry. ❤️😢

But for law students, having an "AI assistant" summarize cases for you is (to borrow someone else's analogy) like having a robot lift weights for you at the gym.

The Korematsu Center @ucirvinelaw.bsky.social filed 4 amicus briefs last week. Sure, 3 were nearly identical, in the cases on the EOs targeting law firms; the other on birthright citizenship. More on deck. Links to the briefs: news.law.uci.edu/2025/04/16/u...

I am so proud to be part of the team that drafted this amicus brief in support of Perkins Coie. As Bob says below, these attacks must stop. And this brief draws on stories of lawyers fighting for school desegregation, union workers, Guantanamo detainees, and Fred Korematsu to explain why.

despite it all I am still basically optimistic that we can make our lives better and that we can still repair the world

🚨This. Is. How. You. Do. It. 🚨

This also holds true for law students thinking about where to apply for their 2L summer.

Is this what you want your legacy to be, law firms? Pandering to this? Clients come and go but integrity is forever.

this is exactly the right answer imo. it's going to hurt like hell for things to get broken, so bad that we wouldn't ever choose it, but once they're broken you get to build free of all the crud of path dependency and that's an opportunity.

We are up against an administration that daily announces or implements policies that are incredibly unjust and flagrantly unlawful. That is our reality, and we need to get used to saying it again and again. It’s exhausting but we have to do it or they win.

When a head of government fires his nation’s air safety officials and planes begin dropping out of the sky with people in them, what do we call the deaths that ensue? Tragedy? Negligence? Something else? Social murder, perhaps? New paper here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....